"Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award • Winner of the Oregon Book Award • A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
''An instant classic. . . a truly beautiful piece of American storytelling.'' —William Kittredge, author of Owning It All
A widowed homesteader is determined to make a life in the unforgiving mountains of late 19th century Oregon in this “powerful novel of struggle and loss.” (Dallas Morning News)
Acclaimed author Molly Gloss drew on pioneer diaries and old family stories to write this modern Western classic of a solitary woman’s frontier life. In the 1890s, Lydia Bennett Sanderson, a hardship-honed widow, leaves her old life behind and journey’s to Jump-Off Creek to make her way as a homesteader in the backcountry of Oregon. Her neighbors are few and far between: Tim Whiteaker and Blue Odell are trying to make a go of it on their small hardscrabble ranch, while Evelyn Walker – a young, lonely wife – is rearing her children in daunting isolation. And a trio of rootless cowboys are squatting in the mountains, their only income the bounty from poisoned wolves. While Lydia toils into the summer, building fences, digging ditches, and repairing her homestead cabin, Tim and Blue engage in a deadly spoilers game with the wolvers. As the months pass, there is good and ill fortune, the exchange of fair-and-square favors, and Lydia finds both courage and community in her determination to survive.
An unforgettable tale in which “every gritty line of the story rings true” (Seattle Times), Gloss delivers an authentic and moving portrait of the American West."
"In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken and confident in ways completely out of proportion with her small frame and bookish looks. The two proceed to strike up an unlikely kinship that will carry them through their tumultuous days in Hollywood -- and, as it happens, for the rest of their lives. Acutely observed and impeccably authentic, FALLING FROM HORSES charts what turns out to be a glittering year in the movie business, seen through the wide eyes and lofty dreams of two people trying to make their mark on the world, or at least to make their way in it. As she did so memorably in her previous novel, the bestselling THE HEARTS OF HORSES, Molly Gloss weaves a remarkable tale of humans and horses, hope and heartbreak. Molly Gloss is also the author of The Jump-Off Creek, a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award, The Dazzle of Day, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the PEN Center West Fiction Prize, and Wild Life, winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award."
